January:

Cadbury finally
accepted defeat in its battle to stay independent by recommending a £12bn takeover from US rival Kraft. The 186-year-old chocolate maker decided to throw in the towel after a long battle that triggered a debate about the vulnerability of British industry Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian

February:

EMI, the music group behind artists such as Pink Floyd, Hot Chip and Katy Perry,
crashed £1.75bn into the red last year. The loss was one of the biggest black holes ever seen in a private equity-backed business and threatened to shred the reputation of Guy Hands, the outspoken City financier whose Terra Firma group paid over £4bn for EMI just before the credit crunch took hold in the summer of 2007

February:

Toyota said it would
recall almost half a million hybrid cars worldwide, including 8,500 of its Prius model in the UK, in the latest blow to the carmaker's reputation following a string of safety scares

February:

Barclays reported record profits, and prepared to pay out bonuses of more than £2bn to its 23,000 investment bankers. Its president Bob Diamond (pictured), who
declined a bonus, along with CEO John Varley, called on people to celebrate the bank's 'remarkable'
financial comeback. Lloyds Banking Group boss Eric Daniels also waived a £2.3m bonus, while Royal Bank of Scotland faced criticism over its decision to hand out £1.3bn of bonuses despite making a loss of £3.6bn

March:

Workers assemble a car at the GM Daewoo plant in Hanoi. There was more bad news for the car industry as
Nissan announced it was recalling more than 500,000 vehicles, mainly in the US, because of problems with their brakes and petrol gauges. The move came just hours after General Motors recalled more than 1.3m cars

March:

Arriva, the company that runs the rail franchise between Penzance and Aberdeen,
received a £1.2bn takeover bid from Deutsche Bahn, the German state-run transport group, just weeks after ending merger talks with French rail operator SNCF. It agreed a £1.6bn deal in April. And
BA cabin crew went on strike despite last-ditch talks between the airline and union

April:

The path of a plane is seen over the top of an erupting volcano near Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland. The volcanic ash cloud over Europe wreaked havoc at airports.
The cost of the disruption to the global airline industry spiralled to £1.1bn, according to the International Air Transport Association. It demanded that European governments compensate the airline industry.
Ryanair sparked a furious response from politicians and consumers by refusing to pay the hotel and food bills of passengers stranded by the volcanic ash cloud, in a blatant refusal to abide by strict EU consumer rules

April:

Supermarket group Tesco
rang up record annual profits yet again despite the economic downturn, and declared there was little danger of a double-dip recession in Britain. Britain's biggest retailer posted underlying pre-tax profits of £3.4bn for the 12 months to the end of February, a 10.1% rise on the previous year. Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco's chief executive, told the City that his company had 'weathered the storm'

May:

Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Prudential,
was fighting to keep his job after City regulators forced the insurer to delay a £14.5bn rights issue to fund its £24bn takeover of Asian rival AIA. The record-breaking fundraising was eventually pulled as the audacious bid fell apart

June:

Sir Terry Leahy, the man who turned Tesco into a supermarket juggernaut with sales of £60bn,
bowed out after a 14-year stint as chief executive. Leahy, who will retire in March, said his work was 'almost complete'. He will be replaced by Philip Clarke, the man who currently leads the international arm of the business

June:

Britain's leading tax experts
challenged George Osborne's claims to have delivered a 'tough but fair' budget, concluding that the measures in the emergency package would hit the poor harder than the rich. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the chancellor could only assert that the better off were the big losers from the austerity move by including reforms announced by Labour. But the budget won plaudits from business leaders and financial markets

October:

The International Monetary Fund raised the prospect of a double dip in Britain's property market when it said
house prices were overvalued and vulnerable to a fall, while the next day the Halifax reported a drop of 3.6% in September – the biggest monthly fall since it started collecting data in 1983

December:

Leaked US embassy cables revealed that the head of the Bank of England
privately criticised David Cameron and George Osborne for their lack of experience, the lack of depth in their inner circle and their tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact. Mervyn King told the US ambassador he had held private meetings with the two politicians before the election to urge them to draw up a detailed plan to reduce the deficit

2010 has been a good year for shares. The FTSE 100 defied the euro crisis, the austerity and the snow to smash through the 6000 point mark on December 23th. The blue chip index is on track for its best December ever, with mining stocks benefiting from the boom in commodities. Next stop, 7000?